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Dialogue Design - Tibet
Written late, and aware it can't be counted. Just here for closure, thus why it's not linked on the hub just through the Development Statement. Introduction Dialogue Design covers all areas of the game; cutscenes, barks and ambient chatter, and scripted text. Being that an MMO is a large commitment of time it is important to reward the player with a focus on worldbuilding, most straightforward with dialogue. Particularly for the type of player with an interest in lore, whom will readily enrichen their own experience by engaging with item, quest writing and with all players with cutscenes that can exhibit a great level of detail and deliver it in an approachable fashion. In addition giving effort to ambient dialogue from NPCs and the environment can be a great reinforcement on immersion and can assist the player in combat with telegraphing remarks. Cutscene Dialogue Cutscenes are used at the open close of story significant moments, which ideally also line up with important gameplay sections such as boss encounters and completing all the quests in a hub area. Cutscenes come in two varieties; pre-rendered which is used for events like entering the Tibet region or reaching the conclusion of the story; and for the rest in-game cutscenes are used instead. These in-game cutscenes deliver the same type of dialogue as scripted quest dialogue, as detailed further down, though use their more engaging format to ensure the player gets info rather than it being optional. Placing these at the start of gameplay sections lets a player gauge whether they think they'll be interested in paying attention without fearing they'll miss out on story for another section, they are segmented by these cutscenes. Pre-rendered cutscenes are used very rarely, as opposed to in-game cutscenes being just uncommon. There are largely using their visuals to interest the player rather than using dialogue, which is still is present. For an example see here. In-Game Dialogue This section covers non-cutscene spoken dialogue; NPC conversations, barks, and dialogue given by enemies in combat. In all cases this dialogue is non-essential, key dialogue is either in cutscenes or scripted text. This this dialogue is primarily for flavour but can also, particularly in combat, be used as a hint system to the player. As a way to share the setting dialogue is both efficient and unobtrusive, if it's not repetitive. Language and its delivery is a unique way to share the culture of factions and other NPCs and so non-essential dialogue is given in Standard Tibetan; both vernacular and formal dialects for regular villagers and Shambhalans respectively; and Standard Mandarin for Chinese. Resukhanapan 'speak' in a mulch of natural sounds and no real language is actually used to avoid giving any cultural group a strongly negative connotation due to the Resukhanapan's demonic nature. Importantly these are only used for non-essential dialogue and so when there is something the player needs to hear it is given in the player's selected language i.e; English, French, German. Examples of this dialogue include; Tibetan villagers having conversations about recent events, Chinese propaganda blaring through speakers in their encampments. The focus is in showing the languages off and sharing with the player a language they likely haven't heard before, with the tone of dialogue also imparting basic information. Because these are linguistically distant and foreign to the primary userbase this dialogue should help provide immersion, as background audio, and prove resistant to player's getting use to it and hearing repetition, which would detract from the immersion. The 'information' provided by tone is mostly for combat gameplay. The tone of an enemy's dialogue is designed to complement other visual qualities such as animation, telegraphing enemy attacks or indicating their alertness to the player or reflecting their current health. This form of dialogue helps the player perform better in gameplay but also helps link the gameplay to the setting. Overall this dialogue is not the most important and its development cost does not scale as well to its impact compared to other elements of dialogue. However I would assert the cultural value of elements such as representation of Tibet and its language, a focal point of its culture, justifies the effort made to include it. Scripted Dialogue This section concerns written text such as minor quests with dialogue windows, item descriptions, and text features in the environment. These elements usually receive minimal player attention and need to organise information in a hierarchy of priority but may have the less important dialogue still be rewarding for lore-orientated players without taking much development time. Quest Dialogue The extent of dialogue should be inversely proportionate to its importance to the player, the more important something is than the less length should be needed to describe it. It is expected players will read at least the first few lines of any page of dialogue, a page here being what fits in a dialogue window, and it should be possible to summarise the primary goal in this space. What follows after may be an elaboration of the first lines to expand on lore and player motivations but any new, critical dialogue should go on another page where it may again be given a brief, prominent position on the page. Here is an example for a non-critical quest, collecting food for a devastated village, stats are filler; "Thank you stranger, without you many more may have died in this attack. They seem to have burned our granary though, before you leave could you help us scavenge food? The nearby river is host to a bounty of fish and in the forest you can find deer. Hunting a few of each would be enough to keep the village strong while we recover, and I'm sure we can scrape together some coin to make it worth your while." Hunt 10 Fish Hunt 3 Deer Reward: 80 Gold This contains a short blurb that gives an outline of the mission, the player can quickly scan down and see the objectives and then they can decide if they are interested or not in this optional mission. If they are not they can exit out and if they are the middle paragraph contains helpful details. Item Dialogue Loot and equipment are a cornerstone and present an interesting opportunity for flavour where the effort required to write this is relatively proportionate to the lower amount of players who will be interested. In addition it can be an area to develop ideas for later development into full elements of gameplay and story. Item descriptions in Tibet are divided into these sections; * Brief; one or two short sentences that describe the item in a clear, simple manner. * History; a paragraph describing the real-world origin or inspiration of the item. * Lore; elaborating on the item to describe it as it appears in-game, presented it in a diagetic fashion. Overall it is short and direct, and basic items will only have a Brief. When an item is selected it will display the Brief after stats and if hovered on for a few seconds will show the full description. As an example, stats are fillers; "Mandala Matchlock Damage: 120 Cooldown: 4s Range: 200 17th Century rifle refitted with an advanced if cumbersome plasma caster. Designed for hunting elusive prey up amongst high Himalayan peaks. Once an old farmer's keepsake, this treasured antique is carved with intricate, geometric patterns. Its rudimentary construction requires its plasma drive be constantly disassembled and repaired for it to function, its deadly beauty is only temporary." The first paragraph reflects the weapon's stats while the second, delayed in appearance, tries to craft worldbuilding into its short space. It hints at hunting in Tibet and at how the locals are supporting the Shambhalans, who are using whatever they can get their hands on for war material. The shoddy plasma mechanics reflect a Buddhist Mandala, which may be elaborated on with a third paragraph or link to a wiki, and justifies its low tier status but it does not affect gameplay beyond a slow fire rate. Environmental Dialogue Small amounts of worldbuilding may be found in dialogue, or rather text, found in the environment such as signs, graves, and carvings. If not reflecting an association with a quest they are typically just relaying basic information, like indicating it is a shop. They are presented in primarily in the player's selected language though if not related to an interactive part of the world then it may be given in an appropriate language; Classical Tibetan or Chinese (both Simple and Traditional), or other appropriate scripts.